FX's The Shield Appreciation Thread - Good cop and bad cop left for the day. I'm a different kind of cop.

[Tepes Thot]

I would add Tara from SOA as another contender closer to Skylar than Corrine.

Corrine was just annoying, and maybe a little slow. However, that makes the point that if that’s the worst I can say about her in this kind of show….she’s doing fine.

Tara was full blown ‘I want in on the action, but out on the consequences’. Jax begged her ass not to get involved, and to go to work. He even fought his own table to try and keep her from having to do work for the club, which was a cushiony privilege NO other old lady got.

Tara threw a tantrum in his grandpa’s basement to be let into the life. She also came back to Charming just to get Jax to kill her stalker (Dutch finally gave in to the urges).

She was the only wife/gf I can think of in a crime show to be given an explicit out. Her way out was so planned and handed to her, it was almost a red carpet. Jax was even on board and told her to go. She threw it away in a childish display at the clubhouse.

If Corinne had been given a nursing job (Tara was a doctor) with free daycare for her kids, and any perk she could name, she would’ve teleported away. So yeah, Corinne is pretty good for this kind of show.

Bonus: Tara is also super coddled by Reddit. I think it’s wine moms/aunts who think Jax is hot and project themselves onto Tara.

 

[MirrorNoir]

I would add Tara from SOA as another contender closer to Skylar than Corrine.

Corrine was just annoying, and maybe a little slow. However, that makes the point that if that’s the worst I can say about her in this kind of show….she’s doing fine.

Tara was full blown ‘I want in on the action, but out on the consequences’. Jax begged her ass not to get involved, and to go to work. He even fought his own table to try and keep her from having to do work for the club, which was a cushiony privilege NO other old lady got.

Tara threw a tantrum in his grandpa’s basement to be let into the life. She also came back to Charming just to get Jax to kill her stalker (Dutch finally gave in to the urges).

She was the only wife/gf I can think of in a crime show to be given an explicit out. Her way out was so planned and handed to her, it was almost a red carpet. Jax was even on board and told her to go. She threw it away in a childish display at the clubhouse.

If Corinne had been given a nursing job (Tara was a doctor) with free daycare for her kids, and any perk she could name, she would’ve teleported away. So yeah, Corinne is pretty good for this kind of show.

Bonus: Tara is also super coddled by Reddit. I think it’s wine moms/aunts who think Jax is hot and project themselves onto Tara.

I find Tara to be more tragic than evil. She made it big in straight society, but picked up a stalker with a badge (which is always a bad thing cliche-wise) and even after (subconsciously) orchestrating Jax murdering him for her, stuck around because deep down, she's white trash and desperately requires her surrogate mom (Gemma)'s approval.

Also, given how the show plays out, I've come to suspect Wendy's OD at the start of the pilot was a ultra-desperation attempt to escape Jax and Gemma's clutches and deny them the chance to corrupt her unborn son Abel, given how bad we see Jax and Gemma be as the show progressed. Also, why Wendy ODed a second time at the end of the pilot, as she realized how her plan had backfired and not only did Jax/Gemma have her kid, but were now dead set on making sure she never saw Abel again (or at least, until Gemma needed Wendy to try and cockblock Tara).

Season 2 of The Wire was also pretty bad, I couldn't give a shit about all of the Union bullshit.

And I don't know, I thought Season 4 was a fucking highlight, Monica Rawlings, Antwon Mitchell... it was fucking great.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=40N4GjWzjkg:81"With all of that money, with all of that power... you're still just a nigger. A nigger with a nigger faggot son. Where's the respect in that?"

This is something they'd never film today, and it's a shame.

I'll defend season two of the Wire, purely because the long shoremen plot was bleak as fuck and the fates of the characters being a metaphor for how the working class white folk are being slowly but surely destroyed by TPTB, to the point that even breaking bad can't save them. Also, Ziggy's a great tragic sad clown figure and his bad end is a testament to his actor's talent that he took what could have been a one dimensional annoying asshole and made him into a tragic figure at the end.

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

I liked season two of The Wire. It was a group of guys down on their luck and at no point it was going to get better for them yet there was no thought given about how these guys were going to make a living once automation would remove the few stevedores left.

David Simon was told to start bringing back the Barksdale gangbangers as ratings for the show dropped. At the time I first watched it I was working with a bunch of union labor and thought it did a good job of capturing the dynamics. Plus I liked the bimbo that was riding Dominic West. It was better than niggers pretending to be philosophers.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

I'll defend season two of the Wire, purely because the long shoremen plot was bleak as fuck and the fates of the characters being a metaphor for how the working class white folk are being slowly but surely destroyed by TPTB, to the point that even breaking bad can't save them. Also, Ziggy's a great tragic sad clown figure and his bad end is a testament to his actor's talent that he took what could have been a one dimensional annoying asshole and made him into a tragic figure at the end.

I understand "The MEsSaGe" too, and yes it's rarely portrayed in tv shows nowadays, but that didn't make the acting or the plot any better...

It felt like The Wire: Bruce Springsteen Edition

 

[TVB]

I understand "The MEsSaGe" too, and yes it's rarely portrayed in tv shows nowadays, but that didn't make the acting or the plot any better...

It felt like The Wire: Bruce Springsteen Edition

More like The Wire: The Saturday Morning Animated Series from the late-80s. The message is just too juvenile that it borders on preachy

 

[Internet War Criminal]

I've always thought that Springsteen's lyrics were cartoonish and maudlin, so I'll take it.

 

[TVB]

I've always thought that Springsteen's lyrics were cartoonish and maudlin, so I'll take it.

Oh yea, his songs scream stupidity. This is why I cannot stand his music. It's only beloved by casual normies and very old boomers born in the late-40s through late-60s

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

I don’t know anyone under 40 who likes Springsteen, Mellencamp or any of the other maudlin faggot singer-songwriters from the 1970s and 1980s.

 

[Super Hans v2]

I would add Tara from SOA as another contender closer to Skylar than Corrine.

Corrine was just annoying, and maybe a little slow. However, that makes the point that if that’s the worst I can say about her in this kind of show….she’s doing fine.

Tara was full blown ‘I want in on the action, but out on the consequences’. Jax begged her ass not to get involved, and to go to work. He even fought his own table to try and keep her from having to do work for the club, which was a cushiony privilege NO other old lady got.

Tara threw a tantrum in his grandpa’s basement to be let into the life. She also came back to Charming just to get Jax to kill her stalker (Dutch finally gave in to the urges).

She was the only wife/gf I can think of in a crime show to be given an explicit out. Her way out was so planned and handed to her, it was almost a red carpet. Jax was even on board and told her to go. She threw it away in a childish display at the clubhouse.

If Corinne had been given a nursing job (Tara was a doctor) with free daycare for her kids, and any perk she could name, she would’ve teleported away. So yeah, Corinne is pretty good for this kind of show.

Bonus: Tara is also super coddled by Reddit. I think it’s wine moms/aunts who think Jax is hot and project themselves onto Tara.

I think it has more to do with that the character and the tards over on reddit are stuck emotionally stuck in high school, making her relatable. And it helps that Maggie Siff is the most attractive of all the crime wives mentioned in the thread.

 

[God of Nothing]

Watching the Macabre video essay and about halfway through
>filler
>filler
>filler
what is with adhd ass people thinking every plot unrelated to the main group is nothing but filler?
for fuck's sake, not everything has to have something substantial upon it
dude even admits that season 4 started so slow so it could build shit up, which is what this "filler" is: establishing a setting, theme, or tone that adds to the overall story

And Julien was a good man before he was a gay one. That's why him being gay was such a big deal to him: he saw it as immoral and wrong. It's why all the morally grey stuff bothers him. He doubts what he considers right and wrong. Reducing him to just muh faggotry is insulting as it is stupid.

As for the seizures, it really wasn't that complex. It was a legitimate tactic against the overall crime culture of LA. Brutal and effective. Antwon couldn't do shit about it and was aping out every time property got seized. It only got stopped because the beaners and shitskins on the city council were getting flak for it.

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

The Shield has very little filler in it. It’s one of its greatest strengths. I’m glad I didn’t waste time on that bullshit video essay retrospective.

 

[God of Nothing]

The Shield has very little filler in it. It’s one of its greatest strengths. I’m glad I didn’t waste time on that bullshit video essay retrospective.

Filler is just a plotline the person calling it isn't interested in these days.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

Yeah the thing about The Shield is that it’s one of the leanest, meanest show around. There are no plot lines that I can think of that were just filler.

The only one that comes close would be S02E09 Co-Pilot, which to be fair was written as filler since Armadillo quit the show for a better role and it kind of threw a wrench in their whole season, but I think that it ended up providing a shit ton of context that the show would be lacking if they didn’t:

- Mackey and the Strike Team being honest cops doing things by the book who get tempted to start cutting corners only after they get squeezed by the brass to provide results and it makes their job easier
- Steps up Dutch as a dickhead when he came in the barn and shows why he gets bullied so hard by most
- Seeing how he and Claudette decided to work together
- The Julian and Danny dynamic from the start, and Julian’s male gaze on Lem’s ass
- and, of course, the most important plot point: how the men’s shitter got shitted.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

I realized Macabre Storytelling was kind of a retard after his The Northman video. I'm not surprised he'd think that The Shield has too much filler.

 

[God of Nothing]

I realized Macabre Storytelling was kind of a retard after his The Northman video. I'm not surprised he'd think that The Shield has too much filler.

haven't watched either
what did he say that was kind of retarded?

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

haven't watched either
what did he say that was kind of retarded?

It's been a while, but I recall it being something like the movie falls apart because Amleth isn't justified in doing all of the things he did because his dad was a bad dude so him trying to get revenge makes him the bad guy of the story, but also that he wasn't bad enough because he didn't want to kill Gunnar or something? Like I remember him specifically talking about how it was up to the viewer to decide who was the "good guy" and "bad guy" and I just thought like woah you missed the point.

It just felt like a guy thinking way too fucking hard and trying to flex his pseudo big brain.

 

[MirrorNoir]

Yeah the thing about The Shield is that it’s one of the leanest, meanest show around. There are no plot lines that I can think of that were just filler.

The only one that comes close would be S02E09 Co-Pilot, which to be fair was written as filler since Armadillo quit the show for a better role and it kind of threw a wrench in their whole season, but I think that it ended up providing a shit ton of context that the show would be lacking if they didn’t:

Getting details wrong :

Co-Pilot was always going to happen as Ryan wanted to do a flashback episode showing Vic's start of darkness and his relationship with the single mother prostitute/Gilroy and in season two (which was written on the fly), he had a situation where the prosthetic David Rees Snell was going to wear to reflect his character's facial disfigurement when he was disfigured, wasn't coming along well as Ryan wanted something more understated compared to the more elaborate make-up effect that the SFX guy FX hooked him up with wanted to do.

So he rushed out the script to do Co-Pilot, which worked for him since he also wanted a downtime episode since the plan always was to have Armadillo be the big bad of the first half of the season and then do the Money Train Heist arc, to get around the issue since Snell was contracted for X number of episodes in season two and it was easier to do a flashback episode while Ryan worked with the SFX person to create a prosthetic that worked for what Ryan wanted Punished Ronnie to look like.

Ironically, Co-Pilot (because it was rushed) was filled with a LOT of continuity fuck-ups; most notably going against what was firmly established in Season One that the Barn had been around for AGES and that Acaveda was a new arrival who immediately butted heads with Vic, who he inherited from the previous administration, was always crooked, and who immediately butted heads with Acaveda over him seeing Vic, realizing he was a dirty cop, and wanting to purge him (and Vic foiling him due to Gilroy's patronage).

It also contradicts word of God details presented by Shawn Ryan in a season one companion book he helped write (which had an opening bit where Ryan makes a huge deal about being canon in his introduction) about Ronnie and Lem; mainly that Ronnie was a founding member of the Strike Team (brought on by Shane, who he was close friends with) while stating that Lem was a relative new hire to the Strike Team (joining right before Terry did) and was so new that no one knew the genesis of his season one nickname "Lemonhead", along with some details about Dutch and Claudette being longtime partners and how Claudette stayed with Dutch for so long as partners, was due to him being the only partner who respected her "no talking about my private life" request, and confirming that Julian had only been on patrol for a couple of weeks in the pilot.

Co-Pilot instead establishes that Lem was a founding member of the Strike Team, that Ronnie was Vic's friend not Shanes (and Lem being Shane's pick to join the Strike Team, reflecting Goggins and Johnson's IRL friendship), and that Claudette and Dutch were relatively new partners.

Also, a lot of people were kind of miffed that the episode didn't do much to explore the Vic/Ronnie friendship given how the ending of the Armadillo storyline played out and that Vic seriously considered falling on his sword for Ronnie rather than force him to recant that Armadillo disfigured him when Armadillo blackmailed Vic. Or give any details about Ronnie's past/backstory outside the line, when the Vic and Shane meet their respective selections for the Strike Team, where Ronnie jokes that he has a mustache because women told him he looked good with a mustache.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

So he rushed out the script to do Co-Pilot, which worked for him since he also wanted a downtime episode since the plan always was to have Armadillo be the big bad of the first half of the season

No, completely wrong. From Shawn Ryan himself:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dead-cats-chilling-confessions-shield-180000402.html

Season 2: "Scar Tissue"​

When actor Danny Pino landed another gig, his season-long arc as violent gang leader Armadillo needed to be abruptly cut short. So he got a bloody new exit plan: To protect Vic and the Strike Team, Lem (Kenny Johnson) and Shane (Walton Goggins) set Armadillo up to be killed while in police custody. "There's this shot that always sticks with me: As everyone in the Barn is freaking out over one prisoner stabbing another, Shane and Lem are just standing there, calm, no real expressions on their face," Ryan says. "Sometimes a problem forces you to create a better solution. It made us be more surprising than planned."

I never said that he didn’t plan on writing Co-Pilot, but at that point they had to rethink and rewrite the back end of the season without Armadillo, and rushing Co-Pilot and having it as “filler” was so the writing team had time to not fuck up the back half.

 

[I Love Beef]

I wasn't mature enough at the time to get the all of the deeper and darker themes of The Shield, but I did enjoy all of the brutal justice Vic dished out (kiddy rapist cholo deserved that knife to the spleen). I need to watch this series again.

Also, I remember when The Shield was going to get a video game by Sammy Studios before somehow the project got the plug. That would have been so fucking sick, even if it was a licensed property video game. From the same devs and publishers that brought you Guilty Gear.

 

[Odd Opossum]

Also, I remember when The Shield was going to get a video game by Sammy Studios before somehow the project got the plug. That would have been so fucking sick, even if it was a licensed property video game. From the same devs and publishers that brought you Guilty Gear.

That did end up being released, and it doesn't sound like it was a good game.